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Dialogue and UniversalismE Volume 4, Number 1/2013

Contemporary Systems Sciences, Implications for the Nature and Value of Religion, the Five Principles of Pancasila, and the Five Pillars of Islam

By

Martha C. Beck

Introduction

In the year 2012, the entire world is engaged in the next, most inclusive, and most serious “Era of Globalization.” We are in the midst of a huge paradigm shift in the way we understand the principles of being, the structures behind the universe, our natural world, human nature, and human culture. People need to grasp the basic principles of the universe, as we now understand them. Everything we experience and observe in contemporary culture is the product of recognizing and tapping into the energy of the universe as we have recently discovered it to exist. We need to have some notion of the scientific foundation for the existence of computers and technology, the cause behind the economic side of globalization. Only by understanding this foundation can we create a new civilization that synthesizes all we know about both nature and culture and provides guidance for how we ought to live. We have been living on the foundation of modern science. This model has been proven inaccurate and destructive. We must change to understanding existence as many layers of interconnected systems.

There are three recent thinkers who all reaffirm the value of religion in our new

way of understanding the universe: Alfred North Whitehead, Carl Jung, and Ernst Lazlo. Whitehead calls for a new synthesis of religion and science. He knows human beings are driven by both the desire to find the causes behind the natural forces they observe and the desire to live for the sake of something immaterial, some higher vision. Jung’s vision of the individuated person, living the fully active and integrated life, is Jung’s way of integrating the religious teachings and insights of the past with the need for human beings to find meaningful and purposive lives today. Lazlo points out that the new model of the sciences, systems sciences, affirms the reality of non-material spheres of nature and culture and the need for people to articulate their values and religious traditions in a way consistent with the systems view. Like Jung, he argues that all the major wisdom traditions have insights that can be, and should be, shown to conform to the systems view. Under the new paradigm, religion, the social sciences, psychology, and the natural sciences reinforce each other to a much greater degree than was assumed to be the case during the era of Newtonian science.

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With this in mind, I will show that the five principles of the Indonesian political philosophy, called Pancasila, should be understood as one example of a model for political leadership and cultural development based on the systems view of the universe, whether or not anyone who helped create it was consciously aware of this. The five principles of Pancasila were a response to the history and peoples living in the area that the leaders were trying to bring together into the nation they named “Indonesia.” The first and most important principle is a religious one: #1: Belief in One Supreme God. The other four principles connect all other aspects of social and political life to that first principle: #2: A just and civilized humanity; #3: Indonesian unity; #4: A people’s democracy led by wisdom through deliberation and representation; and #5: Justice for all Indonesian People.

Indonesia’s constitution differs from the United Nations’ Declaration of

Universal Human Rights because of its emphasis on religious belief and because it does not use the language of ‘rights’ to articulate its sense of justice and how to attain it. I will show that the principles are more consistent with the contemporary systems sciences than are those political documents written during the Enlightenment, such as the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the political documents of the French Revolution, and the United Nations’ International Declaration of Human Rights. Indonesia’s Pancasila represents a model better adapted to the worldview behind the sciences and technologies of today.

Finally, I will mention the Five Pillars of Islam and how the Indonesians

combine a population that is 88% Muslim with a constitution based on religious toleration. This particular aspect of the context within which the Pancasila principles are lived out is, I think, Indonesia’s most unique and most important contribution to make to the development of international civilization. Many Muslims live in anti-democratic, authoritarian nations run by leaders who govern through Islamic Law alone. If those nations’ economies are based on a natural resource, like oil, they do not have to adapt to international globalization and do not have to adopt an international model of culture. They can stay mal-adaptive and survive. As time goes on, however, and we actually do what we all know must be done—switch to environmentally sustainable sources of energy—the resources and the rigid culture in these nations will have to change also. The nations under Islamic Law will eventually be brought into the process of globalization based on systems sciences and the systems view of all aspects of culture. The Indonesian constitution and the history Indonesians make in applying it in their overwhelmingly Islamic society will provide an important model for international development today. Citizens throughout the world, Muslims and non-Muslims, need to know that Muslims can live in a democratic society, with all of its freedoms, and still retain a very serious, pious Islamic way of life. Indonesia has to teach us that lesson, by setting the example.

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I. Ernst Lazlo: Replacing the Paradigm of Modern Scientific Method and Newtonian Physics with the Contemporary Systems Sciences and Worldview

Lazlo begins by saying, The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the breakdown of the mechanistic theory even within physics, the science where it was the most successful. . . Relativity took over in field physics, and the science of quantum theory in microphysics . . . In view of parallel developments in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and economics, many branches of the contemporary sciences became. . . ‘sciences of organized complexity’—that is, systems sciences.1 Lazlo describes nine ways the contemporary systems view replaces the modern

mechanistic view. He refers to modern science as a theory based on the view of nature as physical phenomena. Kant claims our rational minds understand the physical phenomena as a mechanism, like a clock. Empiricists say scientists observe isolated pieces of data and then discover small clusters of cause-effect connections between the pieces. Hume would say the connections are reoccurring associations. This has been the ‘imaginative content’ in the minds of modern scientists, empiricists and rationalists alike. • The worldview of the classical sciences conceptualized nature as a giant machine

composed of intricate but replaceable machine-like parts. The new systems sciences look at nature as an organism endowed with irreplaceable elements and an innate but non-deterministic purpose for choice, for flow, for spontaneity.

• The classical worldview was atomistic and individualistic; it viewed objects as separate from their environments and people as separate from each other and from their surroundings. The systems view perceives connections and communications between people, and between people and nature, and emphasizes community and integrity in both the natural and the human world.

• The classical worldview was materialistic, viewing all things as distinct and measurable material entities. The systems view gives a new meaning to the notion of matter, as a configuration of energies that flow and interact, and allows for probabilistic processes and for self-creativity, as well as for unpredictability.

• In its application to everyday affairs, the classical worldview extolled the accumulation of material goods and promoted a power-hungry, compete-to-win ethos. The new vision emphasizes the importance of information and hence of

1 Ervin Laszlo, The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc., 1996), 8.

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education, communication, and human services over the accumulation of material goods and the acquisition of raw power.

• The classical worldview saw growth in the material sphere as the pinnacle of socioeconomic progress and promoted greater and greater use (and inherently waste) of energies, raw materials, and other resources. The systems view, looking first of all to the whole formed by social and economic parts, insists on sustainable development through flexibility and accommodation among cooperative and interactive parts.

• The classical worldview was Eurocentric, taking Western industrialized societies as the paradigms of progress and development. The holistic vision takes in the diversity of human cultures and societies and sees all of them as equally valid, ranking them only in regard to sustainability and the satisfaction they provide for their members.

• The classical worldview was also anthropocentric, perceiving human beings as mastering and controlling nature for their own ends. The systems view sees humans as organic parts within a self-maintaining and self-evolving whole that is the context and the precondition of life on this planet.

• When the classical worldview was applied to social science, the dominant notions turned out to be a struggle for survival—the profit of the individual—with at best an assumed automatic coincidence of individual and societal good (through Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’). When the systems vision inspires the theories of social science, the values of competition are mitigated by those of cooperation, and the emphasis on an individualistic work ethos is tempered with a tolerance of diversity and of experimentation with institutions and practices that foster man-man and man-nature adaptation and harmony.

• When the classical worldview was applied to medical science, the human body appeared to be a machine frequently in need of repair by factual and impersonal interventions and treatments. The problems of the mind were seen to be separable from those of the body and hence to be separately treated. When the systems view is the basis of a diagnosis, the body is seen as a system of interacting parts, and body and mind are not separable. It is the health of the whole system that is to be maintained by attention to psychic and interpersonal as much as to physical and physiological factors.2

II. Carl Jung: Founder of Archetypal Psychology

What does this different view of the natural world imply for the nature of our

“inner world,” the human psyche? Carl Jung rejected the way the social sciences based on the modern worldview focused on human beings as physical creatures only. 2 Laszlo, 10-12.

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Empiricists like John Locke and John Stuart Mill claimed that the human psyche is a ‘blank slate’ (tabula rasa). We are born with certain genetic characteristics, but who we become is determined by the interaction between genetics and the environment. The ‘environment’ means outside stimulation and the way we respond to it. Such a view implies we are determined by forces outside of ourselves. We do not possess a power called “free will.” In spite of a very simplistic and materialistic worldview, empiricists were optimistic that the sciences and social sciences would someday work out a system for molding human beings so they would no longer act wickedly. They would be programmed to seek moderation in all things, to have empathy with each other, and to work together to solve problems and develop culturally together.

At the other extreme, rationalists such as Immanuel Kant claimed that our

reason is completely detached from the natural world. Scientific knowledge is really a system of universal, necessary, logically consistent laws that are, in fact, true, only because they describe the way we filter the world through the categories in our heads. When we turn that capacity toward our own behavior, we are consciously aware of being capable of following the Moral Law given to us by reason or following our physical desires. Free will consists in our ability to choose between the Moral Law and inclinations. A Good Will is one that always follows the commands of reason. Since reason comes to us a priori, apart from experiences, we can transcend any material influences and use the power of reason to do what our Good Will tells us is right. We should not allow ourselves to be affected at all by the material world when making moral choices. Kant was optimistic that all human beings could learn how to exercise Good Will in their moral actions, leading to a higher level of civilization than ever before.

Carl Jung rejected both views, determinism (we are physical creatures who only

respond to our environment) and transcendentalism (our dignity consists in being aware of ourselves as detached from our material nature and able to act on pure reason, detached completely from emotions and circumstances). In his experience with his patient’s dreams, he discovered images and patterns that reminded him of the myths and stories from the world’s religions. He claims that babies inherit a deeply embedded structure of consciousness that has formed over the millions of years of human evolution. The structure they inherit is not detached from emotions. Rather, it consists of the way the deepest and most animalistic emotions have been channeled over the course of evolution, so people act in ways that follow patterns. The patterns arise out of the human condition, our vulnerability at birth, and our need to develop civilizations that meet all of our natural and cultural needs. The structure newborns inherit also implies that a newborn is not a blank slate exclusively molded by personal experience.

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The psyche is no more a tabula rasa to begin with than is the mind proper (the thinking area). Naturally the concrete contents are lacking, but the potential contents are given a priori by the inherited and preformed functional disposition. This is simply the product of the brain’s functioning throughout the whole ancestral line, a deposit of phylogenetic experiences and attempts at adaptation. Hence the new-born brain is an immensely old instrument fitted out for quite specific purposes, which does not only apperceive passively but actively arranges the experiences of its own accord and enforces certain conclusions and judgments. These patterns of experience are by no means accidental or arbitrary; they follow strictly preformed conditions which are not transmitted by experience as contents of apprehension but are the preconditions of all apprehension. They are . . . inherited functional possibilities, which, nevertheless, exclude other possibilities or at any rate limit them to a very great extent. This explains why even fantasy, the freest activity of the mind, can never roam into the infinite (although it seems that way to the poet) but remains anchored to these preformed patterns, these primordial images. The fairy tales of the most widely separated races show, by the similarity of their motifs, the same tie. Even the images that underlie certain scientific theories—ether, energy, transformations and constancy, the atomic theory, affinity, and so on—are proof of this restriction.3 Jung defines this underlying structure of consciousness as the collective

unconscious, and contrasts it with the subjective unconscious that varies with each individual.

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal…this personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term ‘collective’ because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; . . . The contents of the collective unconscious . . . are known as archetypes.4

Jung is not claiming that we are born with specific ideas that determine our behavior. Rather, we are born with a structure that establishes a limited number of possibilities

3 Carl Jung, Psychological Types, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Vol. 6 of the Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 304-05. 4 Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 9 of the Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 3-4.

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for psychological development. The collective unconscious reflects how our instinctual life has been shaped over millions of years. It represents how the human being has gradually developed from an animal motivated by instinct to a human being molded by patterns of ways of living.

I call it [the collective unconscious] ‘collective’ because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence. Instinct is an essentially collective, i.e., universal and regularly occurring, phenomenon which has nothing to do with individuality. Archetypes have this quality in common with the instincts and are likewise collective phenomena . . . the question of instinct cannot be dealt with psychologically without considering the archetypes, because at bottom they determine one another.5

Jung criticizes the modern way of thinking because it tends to activate the conscious, logical, ‘rational’ way of thinking while repressing and denying instinctual life. Enlightenment thinkers believed falsely that they could end human evils and suffering by teaching people to use reasoning powers alone as the guide for all of their decisions. The denial and/or repression of the unconscious during the Enlightenment did not lead to salvation. The dark side of life—the most violent and destructive instincts—were unleashed throughout Europe in the 20th century. However, says Jung, the instinctual side of life can be either good or evil. It is the source of the most powerful human emotions. When people get into desperate situations they resort to their immediate reactions, to a deeper level of instinctual life. Instinct is also the source of human creativity, when people are inspired to create something greater than themselves.

Jung would agree with the worldview of systems sciences, but would caution systems thinkers not to be too optimistic about the development of humankind once the systems view of nature and culture is adopted. Jung would say that even with a more accurate understanding of the universe, human instinctual life has to be recognized and the instincts transformed from the destructive shadow to a creative instinctual life before people will create cultures that, indeed, have a positive impact on everything around them. Each individual has to come to the recognition of his/her instinctual side and has to develop an ‘instinctual’ passion to avoid allowing his or her behavior to be governed by destructive emotions. Systems thinking will not bring utopia, but it will end the worship of the false idol reason, the false psychology of the

5 Carl Jung, “Psychological Types,” 134.

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blank slate, and the false assumption that we could ‘program’ people out of ever acting on instincts again.

III. The Place of Religion Under the New Paradigm: Whitehead’s

Position Alfred North Whitehead, a major intellectual figure in the 20th century and the

founder of Process Philosophy, claims that religion is a natural and necessary part of every human life and culture. Modernist scientists and intellectuals during the Enlightenment who rejected religion altogether and thought its power over people would eventually fade away were wrong. Religion is not simply a non-scientific and even anti-scientific explanation for the same phenomena that science can now explain. Religion is not the accumulation of myths that claim to be facts and that now science has shown to be myths, meaning false. Rather, Whitehead says that religion and science are “the two strongest general forces (apart from the mere impulse of the various senses) which influence men.”6 Further, religion and science “seem to be set one against the other—the force of our religious intuitions, and the force of our impulse to accurate observation and logical deduction. . . . Science is concerned with the general conditions which are observed to regulate physical phenomena; whereas religion is wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and aesthetic values.”7

Whitehead gives an enlightening example of this seeming incompatibility. Consider, for example, the lives of John Wesley and of Saint Francis of Assisi. For physical science you have in these lives merely ordinary examples of the operation of the principles of physiological chemistry, and of the dynamics of nervous reactions: for religion you have lives of the most profound significance in the history of the world. Can you be surprised that, in the absence of a perfect and complete phrasing of the principles of science and of the principles of religion which apply to these specific cases, the accounts of these lives from these divergent standpoints should involve discrepancies? It would be a miracle if it were not so.8 Given their radically different perspectives, then, it is no wonder that science

and religion should seem to conflict. However, Whitehead goes on to say that in the history of humankind,

6 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967), 181.

7 Ibid., 182-83. 8 Ibid., 185.

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There has always been a conflict between religion and science . . . Both religion and science have always been in a state of continual development. . . In both regions of thought, additions, distinctions, and modifications have been introduced. So that now, even when the same assertion is made to-day as was made a thousand, or fifteen hundred years ago, it is made subject to limitations of expansions of meaning which were not contemplated at the earlier epoch.9 Whitehead explains why the power of religion has degenerated in Western

culture since the birth of modern science. On the one hand, the sciences have exploded with greater and greater knowledge of various aspects of the natural world. On the other hand, however, each expansion of the ‘imaginative picture’ of the natural world connected with a new theory “has found the religious thinkers unprepared. Something, which has been proclaimed to be vital, has finally, after struggle, distress, and anathema, been modified and otherwise interpreted.”10 While the sciences seek out and are successful when they find a new view of the universe that is more comprehensive than the previous one, religion resists change. Whitehead calls for the opposite attitude.

A clash of doctrines is not a disaster—it is an opportunity . . . In formal logic, a contradiction is a signal of a defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety of opinion. Once and forever, this duty of toleration has been summed up in the words, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest.’ The failure of Christians to act upon this precept, [delivered by] the highest authority [Jesus], is one of the curiosities of religious history.11

The same is true of any religion that people threaten by change. The need for religious toleration and growth is more important than ever. Today, everyone in the world can gain an understanding of all the world’s religious doctrines. They can also find out how those who profess each doctrine actually live. The ways of life followed by members of any religious tradition are affected by the history and culture they grow up within.

Religion no longer needs to gain legitimacy by trying to make a supernatural God or gods the cause behind natural events. Whitehead claims that his new idea of religion provides the opportunity for people all over the world to find new ways to

9 Ibid., 182-83. 10 Ibid., 188. 11 Ibid., 187.

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articulate the religious aspect of life: “A release of the religion from the bonds of imperfect science is all to the good. It stresses its own genuine message.”12 He calls for a religious viewpoint that can adapt to scientific changes in worldview while retaining the power it has over people and cultures. “Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development. This evolution of religion is in the main a disengagement of its own proper ideas from the adventitious notions which have crept into it by reason of the expression of its own ideas in terms of the imaginative picture of the world entertained in previous ages.”13

Whitehead articulates his own idea of the nature and purpose of religion: Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest. The immediate reaction of human nature to the religious vision is worship. Religion has emerged into human experience mixed with the crudest fancies of barbaric imagination. Gradually, slowly, steadily the vision recurs in history under nobler form and with clearer expression. It is the one element in human experience which persistently shows an upward trend. It fades and then recurs. But when it renews its force, it recurs with an added richness and purity of content. The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love. The vision never overrules. It is always there, and it has the power of love presenting the one purpose whose fulfillment is eternal harmony. Such order as we find in nature is never force—it presents itself as the one harmonious adjustment of complex detail. Evil is the brute motive force of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision. Evil is

12 Ibid., 189.

13 Ibid.

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overruling, retarding, hurting. The power of God is the worship He inspires. That religion is strong when its ritual and its modes of thought evoke an apprehension of the commanding vision. The worship of God is not a rule of safety—it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.14

Whitehead describes religion as a body of ideas about the ultimate nature and meaning of the universe and of human life. We inherit these ideas from our ancestors, but we must always modify them or they will no longer have any meaning or influence on human thought and action,

The ideas we inherit—they form the tradition of our civilization. Such traditional ideas are never static. They are either fading into meaningless formulae, or are gaining power by the new lights thrown by a more delicate apprehension. They are transformed by the urge of critical reason, by the vivid evidence of emotional experience, and by the cold certainties of scientific perception. . . No generation can merely reproduce its ancestors.”15

This is truer today than ever.

Jung’s Position

Jung agrees with Whitehead that religion and science should not conflict. Each has its own sphere of influence and both will persist throughout human history. Jung agrees with Whitehead that religion is concerned with an intuitive grasp of a vision of life beyond mere physical life. However, Whitehead seems to think religion is a set of ideas about the good life and God. Whitehead seems to think that if intellectuals can rethink religion and articulate their ideas well, they will inspire human beings to live well. Jung is more pessimistic about the human race.

Jung’s view of the collective unconscious as an underlying and unchanging

structure to our instinctual lives is not the same vision as Whitehead. Jung brings back religion as a vital aspect of every culture, but he does so in a different way than Whitehead does. Jung says,

14 Ibid., 192.

15 Ibid., 188.

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[Religion is] a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religion, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors that are conceived as ‘powers’: spirits, daemons, gods, laws, ideals, or whatever name man has given to such factors in his world as he has found powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough to be devoutly worshipped and loved.16

In the past, these spiritual powers have been thought of as living beings, either

on earth or in heaven. Now, however, we can recognize them as embedded in and projections from our own instinctual consciousness.

Jung rejects both the existence of supernatural personal deities and the

worldview of modern science as ways to understand religion and its important function in the human soul and society. Rather, he advocates embracing the old myths and faith tales with a new, non-literal understanding. He argues that religious myths and fairy tales are motivated by the desire to ‘educate’ the unconscious. The stories have survived for centuries and millennia because they touch the deepest layers of the collective unconscious.

It is possible to describe this content [of the unconscious] in rational, scientific language, but in this way one entirely fails to express its living character. Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology.17

Mature human beings have learned the lessons implicit in the images and stories.

It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. It is a question neither of belief nor of knowledge, but of the agreement of our thinking with the primordial images of the unconscious. They are the unthinkable matrices of all our thoughts, no matter what our conscious mind may cogitate. One of these primordial thoughts is the idea of life after death.18

16 Carl Jung, The Psychology and Religion: West and East, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, trans. R. F. C.

Hull. vol. 11 of the Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 17. 17 Ibid., 151. 18 Ibid., 21.

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Jung does not think that science has ‘clearly proven’ that the human soul is exclusively physical and mortal. Rather, he thinks that we have the intuition of immortality because we have the ability to transcend purely physical life through our thoughts. Jung thinks that the idea of immortality gives human beings the best perspective from which to view their lives. They can ‘see’ their lives as a whole with parts, placed within an entire historical and evolutionary context. Jung understands the ‘shadow’ side of a person as that part of human consciousness connected directly to the most primitive human instincts. Some of our shadow side has been shaped for millennia. We inherit the basic parameters within which we live out our instinctual lives from what has been shaped in the past. When we are born, everything we do and feel is registered in our brains but almost all of it is pushed out of consciousness. Jung defines the unconscious as “everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything which, involuntarily, and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness.”19

The events we can bring into consciousness are subconscious at any other point in time. Other experiences and emotions we have repressed deeply into the unconscious. It is crucial for every individual to become conscious of these aspects of their character, because they drive human behavior. Often the most primitive drives are the most repressed. Repressing natural drives does not mean a person will never act on them. On the contrary, in a critical moment, when it is most important to avoid being driven by primitive and violent instincts, the repressed instincts will take over. People who are ‘in touch’ with this primitive side will recognize this force and will be able to control it. The repressed ‘shadow’ is not entirely bad, however. On the contrary, it is the source of the greatest human inspiration to create art, science, community, and all of the truly ‘inspired’ ways people live out their lives.

The shadow cast by the conscious mind of the individual contains the hidden, repressed, and unfavorable (or nefarious) aspects of the personality. But this darkness is not just the simple converse of the conscious ego. Just as the ego contains unfavorable and destructive attitudes, so the shadow has good qualities—normal instincts and creative impulses. Ego [conscious life] and shadow [the unconscious],

19 Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 8 of the Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 185.

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indeed, although separate, are inextricably linked together in much the same way that thought and feeling are related to each other.20 The instinctual unconscious can only be educated through the study of myths,

tragedies, poetry, and other art forms that express the drives of the collective unconscious. Great art exposes the entire collective unconscious, good and evil, and inspires people to choose the positive over the negative.

Jung’s experience of living through WWI and WWII inspired him to spend his

life finding the patterns in the way people experience the shadow. He developed a new kind of psychology to help patients learn how to educate their ‘shadow side.’

There are several kinds of possible reactions to the shadow. We can refuse to face it; or, once aware that it is part of us, we can try to eliminate it and set it straight immediately; we can refuse to accept responsibility for it and let it have its way; or we can ‘suffer’ it in a constructive manner, as a part of our personality which can led us to a salutary humility and humanness and eventually to new insight and expanded life horizons.21

Jung lets people know that the process of recognizing the shadow and transforming it from primitive to sacred is a long and difficult process, yet crucial for anyone who wants to live with integrity.

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for one cannot become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.22 Recognition of the shadow is extremely important because without such a

process of self-examination, people will not only deny the dark desires within themselves but will also project their own unacknowledged desires onto others. They

20 Joseph L. Henderson, “Ancient Myths and Modern Man,” in Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl Jung and M.-L.

von Franz (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964), 118. 21 Edward C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytic Psychology (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 165

22 Carl Jung, The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 145.

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will blame other people for the very faults that exist within themselves, which Jung calls ‘shadow projection.’

There are certain features [of the shadow] which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such . . . because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person . . . The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into a replica of one’s own unknown face.23

Jung’s view of human nature was more pessimistic than that of the Enlightenment thinkers. It is also more pessimistic than Whitehead’s. Whitehead seems to think human nature itself is more plastic than Jung does. Whitehead thinks human beings are, indeed, evolving and will not resort to the kind of brute force we read about in Greek tragedy and elsewhere. Whitehead was writing before WWII. Germany was a very advanced technological society when its citizens carried out the Holocaust. The Germans used scientific reasoning to engage in the most destructive and primitive behavior. Jung did live through WWII and then watched as the world split again into two pieces during the Cold War. Both sides during the Cold War idealized their own civilizations and demonized the other. Both projected the dark shadow onto the ‘other’ to justify war, and then they deluded themselves into calling the aggression virtue. Jung concluded that the human capacity for brutality will never go away. Instead, it must be educated through the continual process of recognizing the dark shadow within and transforming instinctual drives from destructive to constructive. Jung claims that almost everyone, at some point in life, confronts the instinctual side of life and wants to develop personal integrity. Shadow projection only leads to conflict between nations, between individuals, and within a person. Anyone who continually blames others and projects their own animalistic impulses onto others will live an isolated and meaningless life. If the shadow can be recognize and transformed, however, it can be a source of deep self-knowledge and inspiration. Those who have assimilated the shadow have a passion for wisdom and justice because they know how important it is to educate others and develop well-organized communities to prevent a personal or collective regress to a more primitive level of existence.

23 Ibid., 146.

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Jung distinguishes between the ‘self’ as the mere physical being unaware of the instinctual side of life and the ‘Self’ as the union of unconscious and conscious.

Some profound inner experience of the Self does occur to most people at least once in a lifetime . . . a genuinely religious attitude consists of an effort to discover this unique experience, and gradually to keep in tune with it . . . so that the Self becomes an inner partner toward whom one’s attention is continually turned.24

The goal of human life is to integrate conscious and unconscious into the ‘Self.’

If we picture the conscious mind, with the ego as its center, as being opposed to the unconscious, and if we now add to our mental picture the process of assimilating the unconscious, we can think of this assimilation as a kind of approximation of conscious and unconscious, where the centre of the total personality no longer coincides with the ego, but with a point midway between the conscious and the unconscious. This would be the point of new equilibrium, and new centering of the total personality, a virtual centre which, on account of its focal position between conscious and unconscious, ensures for the personality a new and more solid foundation25

Jung uses the word ‘individuation’ to refer to people who have integrated the shadow into their lives. Such a person integrates all aspects of life: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and instinctual. Our most spontaneous intuitions, the ways we react spontaneously to difficult situations, have reached the highest level of maturity.

Individuation is Jung’s term for the process of achieving such command of all four functions that . . . one might open one’s eyes at the center, to see, think, feel and intuit transcendence, and to act out of such knowledge. This . . . is the final good, the Summum Bonum, of all [Jung’s] thought and work.26

24 M. L. Von Franz, “The Process of Individuation,” in Man and his Symbols, eds. Carl Jung and M.-L. Von

Franz (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co, 1964), 210.

25 Carl Jung, Encountering Jung: Jung on Active Imagination, ed. Joan Chodorow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1997), 68. 26 Joseph Campbell, introduction to The Portable Jung, xxviii.

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People who have achieved Selfhood act both spontaneously and creatively in every situation.

The phenomenon is spontaneous, coming and going on its own initiative. Its effect is astonishing in that it almost always brings about a solution of psychic complications and frees the inner personality from emotional and intellectual entanglements, thus creating a unity of being which is universally felt as ‘liberation.’27

A person ‘in touch’ with their unconscious has a running ‘conversation’ with the way the instinctual side ‘emerges’ as a ‘voice’ that wants the conscious person to act a certain way.

Thus, in coming to terms with the unconscious, not only is the standpoint of the ego justified, but the unconscious is granted the same authority . . . The way this can be done is best shown by those cases in which the ‘other’ voice is more or less distinctly heard. For such people it is technically very simple to note down the ‘other’ voice in writing and to answer its statements from the standpoint of the ego. It is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings with equal rights, each of whom gives the other credit for a valid argument and considers it worthwhile to modify the conflicting standpoints by means of thorough comparison and discussion or else to distinguish them clearly from one another.28

Jung argues that the world’s religious history and mythology provide the most profound examples of people who have achieved Selfhood. Jung cites examples from very different cultural contexts and periods that nonetheless all refer to a mystical experience of unity within. In Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, various schools of Christianity, and elsewhere, religious seekers claim to have an experience of a higher level of consciousness. Religious leaders such as Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad are inspiring examples of individuated people. Further, religious mythology provides stories of the spiritual journey from brokenness to wholeness and examples of the Great Man, the one who is whole.

This inner Great Man redeems the individual by leading him out of creation and its sufferings, back into the original eternal sphere. . . . The whole inner psychic reality of each individual is ultimately oriented

27 Jung, Jung on Active Imagination, 82.

28 Ibid., 58.

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toward this archetypal symbol of the Self.29 I could say the same thing in the words of St. Paul: ‘Yet not I live, but Christ liveth in me.” Or I might invoke Lao-tzu and appropriate his concept of Tao, the Middle Way and creative centre of all things. In all these the same thing is meant.30 Because religious language is symbolic language for Jung, not meant to be taken

literally, Jung thinks the religious literature of the past is one subclass of the broader class of art. Great art is art that activates the collective unconscious. It exposes whatever a culture has repressed, so citizens can bring any particular repressed drive into consciousness and trigger the collective desire to avoid making the particular mistake of being driven by that type of destructive instinct.

That is the secret of great art, and of its effect upon us. The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance of art. It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image, and in raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers.31

Societies must have art in order to stay healthy. They must have great artists at work, exposing what they are blind to, reminding them of their capacity for evil and of the evils of ignorance and denial.

The Position of the Systems View of the World

Ernst Lazlo’s description of the implications of systems theory for understanding religion and the religious attitude toward life is also compatible with Jung and the kind of theory Whitehead encouraged future thinkers to set forward, based on the new view of the universe given to us by the sciences. Lazlo explains why

29 Ibid., 202. 30 Ibid., 68. 31 Carl Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull,

vol. 15 of the Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 82-83.

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the systems view of the world does not imply the kind of radical division between religion and science that was so prevalent when modern science was the dominant paradigm for understanding nature and human nature. Lazlo points out the change in the ‘imaginative picture’ of the world provided by systems sciences. The systems view accepts the nature and importance of religion when it is correctly understood.

The shift from the classical to the systemic worldview is healthy, and its completion is urgent. Worldviews are constellations of concepts, perceptions, values, and practices that are shared by a community and direct the activities of its members. . . If a worldview is coherent and embracing, it can also provide a pathway for carrying people through the succeeding epochs of their lives, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood and into old age.32 In Western society, the mythical worldview of antiquity and the doctrinaire

worldviews of the Middle Ages have been surrendered, and the resulting vacuum was to be filled by science. The atomistic worldview inspired by Newtonian science promised to fulfill the functions of comprehensive and consciously held worldviews, and Marxists and other stalwart souls believed that a scientific concept would one day eliminate the need for myth and religion altogether. In our day, however, the promise of a worldview derived from the classical tenets of modern science is increasingly questioned. Alienation and anomie are on the rise, and adherence to an atomistic concept offers scant relief. There is an urgent need to go beyond classical science’s view of the world, to a more integrated but no less tested and testable view.

We cannot expect to satisfy all the requirements attaching to a worldview in reference to science alone, without also drawing on the insights of religion and the values of humanism, but we can and should recognize that the avant-garde branches of the contemporary sciences are veritable fountainheads for the creation of a non-atomistic and non-mechanistic vision that can fill the need for practical guidance in our time. The new systems view can provide the clues, the metaphors, the orientations, and even the detailed models for solving critical problems on this precious but increasingly crowded and exploited planet.33 Lazlo’s position on religion is similar to Whitehead’s and Jung’s: religion and

culture cannot be reduced to the model of materialistic, atomistic science. Ancient

32 Laszlo, 12-13. 33 Ibid.

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thinkers have a model that needs to be recovered in a version that fits with current understandings of reality.

The philosopher-scientists of antiquity viewed the human phenomenon within a cosmic context and held that to understand humans one must understand their world. But following the rise of modern science, investigators tended to dissect general questions concerning human nature into specific problems to be handled by specialized research. The classical scientific method led to a vast number of highly accomplished theories concerning man’s behavior, dispositions, and even his subconscious. But it also led to the fragmentation of our understanding of human beings. In the midst of all the complex special theories, we have gained little real insight into human nature itself. In fact, some theories would deny that there is any such thing, preferring instead to think of humans as a black box which correlates stimuli with responses. Opposed to atomism and behaviorism, the systems view links the human being again with the world (s)he lives in, for he or she is seen as emerging in that world and reflecting its general characteristics.34 Instead of reducing human beings to mere physical creatures, systems thinking

recognizes them as the most complex combination of multiple systems: material and non-material. They have emerged from the natural systems that evolved before they did.

In contemporary systemic thinking the human being is not a sui generis phenomenon that can be studied without regard to other things. He/she is a natural entity, and an inhabitant of several interrelated worlds. By origin (s)he is a biological organism. By work and play (s)he is a social role carrier. And by conscious personality (s)he is a Janus-faced link integrating and coordinating the biological and the social worlds. The human being is, in the final analysis, a coordinating interface system in the multilevel holarchy of nature. To know [what a human being is] we must know something about that remarkable slice of reality which, instead of running down, keeps winding up. The human being is one module in the multilevel structure that arose on earth as a result of nature’s penchant for building up in one place what it takes down in others. On multiple levels, each with its own variant of the general systems-characteristics which reflect the nature of the self-

34 Ibid., 60.

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constructive segment of the world, systems interact with systems and collaboratively form suprasystems. The human individual is a part of a majestic cathedral of great complexity of detail, yet of sweeping simplicity and order in overall design. All parts express the character of the whole, yet all parts are not the same. This is the systems concept of nature, and it is a precondition of coming to know ourselves.35 Like Whitehead’s example of the difference between the way science and

religion describe St. Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, Lazlo explains the difference between these two levels of reality. On the systems view there is no separation between the natural and the cultural worlds. Lazlo’s view rejects the kind of gap between material and non-material realities in Whitehead’s view. The systems view of the underlying structure of the material world has changed our view of the relation between nature and culture.

The difference between a swarm of bees and a dog is one of degree, not of kind. The dog is a more integrated system than a swarm of bees, therefore it is more convenient in more respects to speak of the dog acting than his body cells doing so. Think how awkward it would be to describe a concert goer’s reaction to Beethoven as the reaction of the cells in his nervous system, not to mention of the subcellular tissues and bodies constituting his nerve cells. In the same way it is more convenient to speak of a student body being riotous or bright or lazy than each individual student, and of a nation being upset rather than each of its citizens.36 For Lazlo, all aspects of human nature can be understood as following the

same basic structure. However, human beings have evolved as the only creatures with reflective self-consciousness, the great gift and curse that makes them unique and that leads to culture and free choice. We are both alike and yet fundamentally different from anything else on earth. Certainly human beings possess the quality of ‘subjectivity,’ meaning they respond to outside stimuli, like all other plants and animals, but because of the power of self-conscious awareness, human beings know what is going on. This awareness gives them the power to transcend immediate stimuli and to form levels of reality that are not driven by immediate stimulus-response relationships. This makes humans creatures of culture and unique in the history of evolution and systems.

35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 68.

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When subjectivity is defined as the ability of a system to register internal and external forces affecting its existence in the form of sensations, however primitive they may be, we must conclude that subjectivity is universal in nature’s realms of organized complexity. But this conclusion does not hold for reflective consciousness, the ability of a system to be aware of its subjectivity. Self-awareness, as contrasted with subjectivity, does not appear to be a universal property of natural systems. There are good reasons to correlate self-awareness with certain varieties of highly integrated nervous functions, performed only by the most evolved nervous systems . . . Organisms endowed with reflective consciousness are liberated from the world of concrete here-and-now experience and can enter a quasi-autonomous world of their own creation.37 To a systems thinker, it is clear that human beings are unique. “It is relatively

easy to tell whether any organism possesses reflective consciousness by noting whether it has developed a language and other symbolic modes of expression and communication, and whether it can transcend the limits of the here-and-now by making plans not directly triggered by actual stimuli. Man alone passes this test.”38

In human beings, the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that engages in the

activity of “monitoring the performance of other systems and setting it right when needed.”39 On the systems view, human evolution does not reduce human beings to ‘mere’ animals, physical creatures trying to survive. Rather, systems theory leads to the conclusion that human beings are completely unique. Human culture has evolved out of nature but is a completely different kind of reality. First, evolving humans learned how to recognize patterns in their experiences.

Our ancestors exploded the limits of genetically programmed behavior. They learned to learn from experience. By reflecting on the events of a hunt, for example, they could abstract its relevant elements and compare them with other occasions. They could select the most successful pattern of behavior and adopt it . . . [over time] the brunt of the responsibility for survival rested on abstract mental processes, that is, on intelligence.40

Next, human beings develop languages to communicate their thoughts, leading to the formation of culture.

37 Ibid., 69. 38 Ibid., 70. 39 Ibid., 71. 40 Ibid., 72.

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Human language, in using denotative symbols rather than expressive signs, became an effective instrument for communicating meaning. It enabled our ancestors not only to survive, but to dominate their world. Existence became social existence, within the context of a common set of meanings, communicated by means of a common language. Culture was born, and elaborate forms of social organization created. We became a sociocultural animal. . . Culture is more than a tool of human survival—it is a qualitatively higher phenomenon. Thinking rationally and feeling with clarity and intensity, coupled perhaps with faith and a conscious morality, is qualitatively different from behaviors to assure one’s survival and the continuity of the species. Culture and survival functions must not be confused.41

Over time, human beings develop more and more complex societies, to the point where we are now living in societies that depend on an unsustainable level of exploitation of natural resources.

Our evolutionary history determined that we become a cultural creature, but did not determine what kind of culture we would have. Hence our problem today is not whether to have a culture; it is what kind of a culture to have. And this requires some serious thought. The kind of culture we inherited from our fathers and grandfathers is beginning to challenge our ability to survive on this planet. If we do nothing more than blindly accept it . . . we may not have the grandchildren to hand it down to.42

Human beings naturally need to develop values. “Values define cultural man’s need for rationality, meaningfulness in emotional experience, richness of imagination, and depth of faith.”43 Yet some values lead to self-destruction, both individually and collectively, and hence need to be reexamined and changed. Lazlo claims that the rejection of ancient myths in favor of modern science was based on a mistaken view of both myth and science. It led to the separation of culture from nature, reason from emotion, a great mistake in the formation of values and of culture.

In early cultures rational, emotive, imaginative, and mystical elements were interwoven in syncretic unity. Myth is part science, part art, part religion. How many millennia humankind lived with one foot on the solid ground of biological and physical reality and the other in the

41 Ibid., 73. 42 Ibid., 75. 43 Ibid., 76.

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nebulous world of myth is a subject for speculation. But scientific thought in the West did not divest itself of myth until the beginning of the great Hellenic culture, some four thousand years ago. In a slow but seemingly inexorable process, the rational and the emotive-imaginative-mystical element of myth were separated. One cohered into philosophy, first cosmological, then humanistic and social; the other into religion, literature, and art. The great split the led to the medieval distinction between moral and natural sciences, and later to the malaise of the ‘two cultures,’ was foreshadowed in the rivalry of Greek philosophers and dramatists. The global unity of previous cultures was gone, and never entirely recovered.44 Lazlo rejects the modern assumption of a complete separation of ‘facts’ from

‘values.’ On the Enlightenment view, scientists are value-free, emotionless, detached observers of what we cannot help but observe. Religion, ethics, emotions, etc. are all non-rational, either anti-rational or simply a completely different kind of reality. On the systems view, everything in the universe must be understood from the point of view of ‘values’ in some sense. Every action is directed toward a goal and achieving that goal is its ‘value.’ There are no facts apart from some kind of thing moving or changing for the sake of realizing some capacity and creating reality, some inherent value.

Objective value norms can be deduced directly from the contemporary systemic world picture . . . Values are goals which behavior strives to realize. Any activity which is oriented toward the accomplishment of some end is value-oriented activity . . . Nothing that pursues an end is value free. Even science, that oft-cited paradigm of human objectivity, turned out in the light of recent investigations to be value-oriented not merely in the general sense of pursuing truth, but also in the specific sense of pursuing certain selected avenues toward the grasp of truth. There is nothing in the sphere of culture which would exempt us from the realm of values—no facts floating around, ready to be grasped without valuations and expectations. Even more importantly, there is nothing in all the realms of natural systems which would be value-free when looked at from the vantage point of the systems themselves. Just as there are values implicit throughout the natural world, systems thinkers also argue that human history ought to be understood as driven by a set of universal values. All human beings, from the earliest time, have been motivated by some unchanging values.

44 Ibid.

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Contemporary cultural anthropologists are specifying a number of fundamental universal values shared by people everywhere. The same basic values of survival, mutual collaboration, the raising of children, the worship of transcendent entities, and avoidance of suffering, injustice, and pain, are manifested by all cultures, albeit often in radically different ways. The surface forms differ, but the depth structures are analogous. The human being pursues his ends as a biological, social, and cultural being, wherever he lives . . . Each of us ‘must’ (in the sense that he or she cannot help but) commit himself to survival, creativity, and mutual adaptation within a society of his peers; the alternative to these is isolation and death. But there is no imperative attached to the cultural specification of these values. These we can choose according to our insights . . . [but we] remain within the limits of general natural-systems values. Finding and respecting these limits is precisely the problem facing us today.45

The existence of universal values does not mean that all human behavior is morally correct simply because it aims to achieve some kind of good or better life. Rather, the power of human choice means that human beings can choose to behave in ways that are so unnatural as to be self-destructive. In such cases, it is possible to distinguish between describing the values people have, what ideas of good drive their behavior, and normative values, the kinds of behavior that are most likely to lead to the goal of self-fulfillment, the ultimate goal of all behavior and all other values. Descriptive values are those we observe, while “normative values (or value norms) are things we discover by examining human characteristics and pointing to those values which could lead people to fulfillment. Hence normative values are not described but postulated; they are creations of the inquiring intellect [but not arbitrary].”46

Lazlo returns to ancient philosophy—Aristotle—to find a definition of human values as the realization of human nature, self-fulfillment, within a broader natural context. Aristotle did not separate a thriving individual and culture from co-existence with nature. Aristotle’s view is very much like the position of systems theory.

What are intrinsic human norms? The Greeks had an answer: they said that the end of the good life is happiness. Happiness, Aristotle specified, is the fulfillment of that which is specifically human in us . . . Self-fulfillment, as contemporary humanistic thinkers and psychologists

45 Ibid., 80. 46 Ibid., 81.

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acknowledge, is the end of human purposeful behavior. It is the actualization of potentials inherent in all of us. It is the pattern of what can be, traced in actuality. Individual fulfillment can be a human value. And it can be specified and analyzed in the systems perspective.47

Aristotle assumed human beings have choice, but that their choices can all be evaluated as better or worse on the basis of whether they are more likely or less likely to lead to the fulfillment of the agent and of the entire social, political, and cultural context within which individuals make choices and live out their lives. Knowing the best thing to do is wisdom; not knowing is ignorance. Our choices are the product of what we know or do not know, or of what comes to mind in a critical situation when we have to make a decision without having time to reexamine all we know. ‘Free will’ as an independent power of the soul is not one of the powers of the human soul on Aristotle’s view.

Like Aristotle, systems thinking rejects both modern empiricism and modern rationalism as a way to understand the natural world and as a way to understand human nature. In relation to the question of free will, modern empiricists claimed that human beings do not even have what Aristotle called the power of choice. Rather, human behavior is completely determined by material causes from within (body chemistry and genetics) and from without (human relationships and culture). On the empiricist view, the ‘blank slate’ at birth is gradually filled in. Kant’s version of modern rationalism claims that our a priori, disembodied capacity to formulate the concept of what we ought to do in a given situation means we possess the power to make choices completely detached from any physical, social, political, or cultural context. Kant rejects any notion of being molded by body chemistry, genetics, relationships or other external factors, other than that we cannot defy the laws of physics.

The systems view claims that we live within a much bigger cultural system that is continually adapting and responding to all the other natural systems, but we have a great deal of choice about what to do within that cultural context, as is true for any natural system. Although I cannot defend this position here, Aristotle’s view is similar to the systems view as Lazlo describes it.

There is a high degree of internal plasticity within any natural system. The system as a whole is determinate, but the relationship of the parts is not. This is not the mechanistic casual determinism of classical scientists, but the flexible, dynamic ‘macrodetermination’ of contemporary systems biologists, psychologist, and social scientists . . . Roles are not made for

47 Ibid., 82.

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given individuals, but for kinds of individuals classed according to qualification. When the roles are filled, the particular personality of each new tenant is reflected in his interrelations with others, and it produces corresponding shifts within the organizational structure. There is flexibility within the system, as part adjusts to part.48

The goal of a well-lived life is simply to become as completely human as possible. Our humanity is a multifaceted, multilayered system. The systems view is a kind of humanism.

Our humanistic goal is to enhance individual fulfillment in an increasingly deterministic multilevel society composed of greatly differentiated individuals. Fortunately this is a feasible endeavor. Like all complex natural systems, human institutions and societies function best when they are spontaneous expressions of the freely chosen activities of their interrelated members. Such a society is the norm against which we must measure existing forms of social structure.49 Early on during the Enlightenment, intellectuals believed that the materialistic

outlook would eliminate the anti-intellectual and reactionary attitude of religion and replace it with the exploitation of natural resources to form middle-class, democratic societies where everyone was encouraged to flourish. As time went on, it became clear that a materialistic view of reality would lead to a culture that values material wealth above all else. Systems thinkers point out that we have exploited the earth’s resources to the point of destroying both ourselves and life on earth as we know it. It is time for a different imaginary picture in our minds of the earth. The earth is an interconnected living being, a Gaia system, a ‘mother’ who we must care for if we are to survive. We need to recognize this underlying system.

The Western world offers the values of affluence as the panacea for all social ills. As norms, these values are now superannuated. In their place we must propose positive, humanistic value norms. Humanistic norms are not arbitrary: they are encoded in every natural system. But they can be overlaid by diverse cultural value objectives and hence, in times of urgency, they need to be consciously rediscovered. If they are found and adopted, we will again exercise our powers of adaptive innovation in maintaining ourselves and our culture within the thresholds of

48 Ibid., 85. 49 Ibid., 87.

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compatibility with the dynamic and balanced multilevel holarchy that is the biosphere-cum-humanity: the Gaia system of planet Earth.50

Lazlo embraces religion as one important way to get ourselves oriented to the

universe, to the natural world, to ourselves, and to each other. The root meaning of ‘religion’ is to bring together.

Science addresses reason and intellect. Humanity, however, is both a rational and spiritual species; the human being has an intellective as well as an affective faculty. Consequently if the norms of contemporary humanism are not only to be discovered but also effectively brought to bear on the thinking and behavior of contemporary people, the rational discoveries of science need to be complemented by affective, time-honored tasks of religion, as ‘re-ligio’—the binding and integrating of people within meaningful communities—takes on a fresh aspect. Not the inculcation of particular items of belief and patterns of action, but the basic orientation of human beings in the world around them is in question. This orientation should shift from the atomistic perspective of the mechanistic worldview to the holistic perspective of the systemic one.51 Lazlo calls for religious thinkers to formulate old religious concepts in new

ways, ways that fit with reality and also with the basic moral lessons and orientation of all the world’s religions in the past.

Religions would not need to sacrifice, or even compromise, their cherished tenets to make a unique contribution to this shift. They would only need to draw on their own humanism and ecumenism to encourage creative thinking in regard to the elaboration and extension of their traditional insights. There is, obviously, a significant humanistic and ecumenical component in every great religion. Judaism sees humans as God’s partners in the ongoing work of creation and calls on the people of Israel to be ‘a light to the nations.’ At the heart of the Christian teaching is love for a universal God reflected in love for one’s fellows and service to one’s neighbor. Islam, too, has a universal and ecumenical aspect: Tawhid, the religious witness ‘there is no god but Allah,’ is an affirmation of unity as Allah means divine presence and revelation for all people. Hinduism perceives the essential oneness of mankind within the

50 Ibid., 88. 51 Ibid.

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oneness of the universe, and Buddhism has as its central tenet the interrelatedness of all things in ‘dependent co-origination.’ In the Chinese spiritual traditions harmony is a supreme principle of nature and society; in Confucianism harmony applies to human relationships in ethical terms, while in Taoism it is an almost esthetic concept defining the relationship between man and nature. And the Baha’I faith, the newest of the world religions, sees the whole of mankind as an organic unit in process of evolution toward peace and unity—a condition that it proclaims both desirable and inevitable. The great religions could draw on such ecumenical and humanistic elements to nurture a creative elaboration of their fundamental doctrines, supporting and promoting the shift to the new holistic consciousness.52 When religion is understood in this broader way, it can easily be integrated into

the systems view of reality. The key unifying concept could be the spiritual assessment of the universe’s progressive self-creation. The vast sweep of system-building processes from Big Bang to the emergence of life, mind, and consciousness could be recognized, and indeed celebrated by the religions. The recognition of the evolutionary self-creation of humanity, and of the larger reality of the cosmos, need not be confined to the empirical sciences. The process is all-embracing, and has a spiritual in addition to a physical dimension. We bear, after all, within our own body the impress of every transformation through which the universe has ever passed. Not only our bodies, also our minds are immanent to this process. The forces that brought forth the quarks and the photons in the early moment of the radiance-filled cosmos, that condensed galaxies and stars in expanding spacetime, and that created the complex molecules and systems on life-bearing planet—these forces inform our brain and thus infuse our mind. They could come to self-recognition in each thinking and feeling human being. By recognizing and celebrating the world’s evolutionary self-creation, religions could promote this process of recognition in each individual . . . They could celebrate the evolution of the noosphere on Earth as the next, and especially significant, phase in

52 Ibid., 89.

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the world’s evolutionary self-creation . . . the self-creating universe is our larger self—our primary sacred community.53 Human culture is a system that emerges from human self-conscious awareness.

As such, there is no natural necessity that religious ideas will, in fact, evolve in a way that ensures our survival. Culture is entirely different from biology; hence it is possible to create a self-destructive culture. Religious ideas can serve either a creative or a destructive purpose. However, a religion that ignores our current destruction of the planet and our collective self-destruction is out of touch with what we know to be the basic structures of reality. Because of the crisis in our relationship to the ecosphere, to the Gaia system, Lazlo calls for a renewal of religious ideas.

Religious renewal always came in the wake of civilizational crises. It was in the disastrous moments of the history of Israel that the prophets of Judea made their appearance; Christianity established itself in the chaos left by the moral weakening of the citizens of a declining Roman Empire. The Buddha appeared in a period of spiritual and social confusion in India; Mohammed proclaimed his mission in an epoch of disorder in Arabia; and Baha’ullah wrote in confinement imposed by a moribund Ottoman Empire. Today, at a time when humankind is in the throes of the greatest and deepest transformation it has ever known, there is an epochal need for a creative extension of the traditional fundaments of the great religions, to complete and complement the rational worldview that is already emerging within the new sciences. With an alliance between science and religion, the shift to a systemic and holistic worldview would be reinforced. Both through reason and through feeling, contemporary people could be brought into closer harmony with each other, and with their environment. Our knowledge has made us increasingly autonomous in nature, and enabled us to create the world of culture. It has freed us from many of the bonds of biological existence and given us license to determine our own evolution. But the possibility of error is the price we pay for freedom. The cultures we can build for ourselves may be manifold, but they must remain compatible with the structured holarchy of nature. We can build culture beyond these limits only at our immediate peril. 54

53 Ibid.,90. 54 Ibid., 90-93.

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IV. The Transition from the Modern Paradigm to the Systems View in the Relation between Religion and Politics

V. The view of religion emerging from Whitehead, Jung, and systems theory is

that we need a resurgence of religion in two senses. First, at the intellectual level, religious ideas can be and should be integrated with the new model of reality. At the practical level, in the promotion of a certain way of living as ‘the will of God/the gods,’ we need a model for political life that integrates religion with political power.

John Locke’s understanding of the natural foundation for human rights was

completely materialistic. His goal was to educate progressive thinkers to separate religious belief from political life. There would be no single official state religion. The state would tolerate different religious traditions. If someone believes that every marriage is ‘what God has brought together,’ and it is a sin to get a divorce, Locke thought that was fine. But from the point of view of the civil magistrate, the rule of law, divorce should be legal as long as both partners agree to it. Citizens should have a right to get a divorce, or should not be deprived of that right they have because they are natural, material human beings. Over and over, Locke separates the political perspective from the religious perspective in a way that defines political life as completely materialistic and self-centered and religious life as the opposite.

For Locke, human rationality is purely natural, not spiritual, and is naturally

dedicated to the biological goal of self-preservation. A rational person is ‘industrious’ and spends his time working hard at giving economic value to the land and other natural resources so he and his family can preserve themselves. Religious instincts are supposed to control this impulse by limiting the desires. We should work hard to get what we need and not to be greedy. Greed is a sin. Locke did not recommend making laws to prevent greed, however. Even though Locke knew that the invention of money enabled people to accumulate much more than they need, he did not make money illegal.

For Locke, every member of civil society had to believe in God and the

immortality of the soul in order to be trustworthy, especially when asked to testify in a court of law. Locke assumed, or hoped, that believing in God and eternal judgment after death would inhibit people from greed and all the other vices. He set up a model of minimum government interference in the lives of citizens. People should be free to live out their natural rights to life, liberty and possessions, including religious freedom to understand God in whatever way they like.

Although Locke claimed to be very progressive and tolerant in regard to

religious belief, he focused almost exclusively on different branches of Christianity.

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Both Locke and Hume held unjustifiable prejudices against Islam. Even worse, they made a point of putting their prejudices in writing, in books they knew would be read long after they died. Both Locke and Hume explicitly point to Islam as a backward and barbaric religion, without knowing much of anything about it. One would think that such ‘progressive’ thinkers would distinguish between facts and rumors about a cultural tradition that they had not experienced directly. One would also think that an intellectual would not judge a religious tradition according to the behavior of its so-called ‘disciples,’ since ‘disciples’ who identified with the various branches of Christianity slaughtered each other for centuries over differences in doctrine and in the name of ‘God’s will.’ The inconsistency between the belief in using scientific method of the Enlightenment thinkers and this particular prejudice is stunning. Jung would call this a clear example of ‘shadow projection.’ Locke and Hume think of Islam and Islamic culture as ‘the other,’ as an evil demon. Christianity, on the other hand, is necessarily good, or is inherently much better.

This kind of idealization of one’s own tribe, religion, etc. and demonization of

someone one identifies as ‘other’ is exactly what Jung claims we ought to always be aware of and avoid in our personal and political lives. This projection of the dark shadow is particularly evident in, and particularly destructive in relation to, our political lives. Jung lived in Europe during WWI and WWII. He saw the various nations of Europe demonize each other, each blaming the other(s) for what was a complicated network of cause-effect. A systems thinker would think of the situation as a holistic system that was systematically destroying itself. Jung watched as the Germans demonized the Jews, using them as a scapegoat. After WWII ended and the mistakes were supposedly acknowledged, Jung watched as the same sick and dangerous projection of the dark shadow took over the world during the Cold War. The entire world was caught up in being either ‘for’ Communism and authoritarianism or ‘for’ freedom, democracy, and human rights. Both sides oversimplified the insights of the other. Both committed great atrocities in the name of protecting the world from the evil demon of the ‘other.’

After the Cold War, the world witnessed a few years of relief from such a

black-and-white division of the entire world before it set in again. Since September 11, 2001, the world has once again divided itself into ‘them’ and ‘us.’ On one side are the “terrorists” and on the other side are the “lovers of freedom.” Rulers in oil-rich Muslim nations easily maintain their power by distributing some of their wealth to the poor and uneducated and by convincing them of the evils of Western society and culture. Westerners blame Islam. The deeper cause is our own addiction to oil. Westerners will not admit that these ‘demons,’ the terrorists, were born from the greed and ignorance of the West. The American economy depends on exploiting natural resources around the world, buying oil from Muslim nations, and believing

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that Americans have a ‘God-given right’ to exploit nature and have an affluent lifestyle. Leaders of mid-East nations rich from oil are happy to reinforce Islamic beliefs by condemning American greed and arguing that Islam is clearly a superior religion because its adherents are self-controlled and generous.

When Americans desire a higher standard of living than people in any other

society in human history, Muslims around the world can convince their followers and convert non-Muslims based on the idea that Muhammad was the ‘Seal of the Prophets.’ On this view, Muhammad was called by God to finish Jesus’s work. Jesus did not work, marry, raise a family, or exercise political power. Jesus asked people to ‘love God and your neighbor as yourself,’ but did not give posterity a model of how that love can be exercised in the context of the complications of adult life. Muhammad finished the work by setting a model of how to live a complete life in obedience to God. He was a businessman, a husband, a father, and a political leader. As long as Westerners are indeed materialistic, and even as long as they are perceived to be, Islam will be a strong influence in international cultural life. The more Americans insist on using oil and importing it from Muslim nations, the more likely it will be that Islam will gain members and power around the world.

The animosity between the disciples of the Religions of the Book, Jews,

Christians, and Muslims, as it is being played out in the confrontation between Israel and Palestine, could easily lead to a world war with untold destruction. Each religious tradition focuses on blind ‘belief’ in the different words in their Holy Books about the meaning of life on earth. Hindus, Buddhists, and all others are supposed to accept behavior that is the antithesis of any authentic religious life justified by words in books they do not accept as the most important religious texts. Even if such a ‘holy war’ does not occur, the continued use of fossil fuels will lead to wars for resources throughout the world. The colonial era led to wars between the colonial powers and the people they subjugated. Their primary motive was greed: exploiting the natural and human resources in the colonies to increase their national wealth. The next phase of globalization has and will continue to lead to wars between nations in the contest for natural resources, the same motive as the colonial era.

The views of religion and the relation between religion and the nature of reality

as Whitehead, Jung, and Lazlo express them show that there is a great cultural need to reunite politics and all other aspects of civilized life with an understanding of ‘religion’ that is international and interdenominational, and that binds people together in all their personal, social, political, cultural relationships and in their relationship with the natural world. The conclusion of this paper will point out that Indonesia’s founding political ideology, as expressed in the five principles of Pancasila, is one model for how to unite religion with politics and how to unite both religion and politics with all

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aspects of life, within a nation, between nations, and in the relationship between human culture and nature throughout the world.

VI. The Place of Indonesia’s Pancasila in the Development of a New

Paradigm for the Relation between Religion and Politics

In 1945, Indonesia first broke away from being controlled by the Dutch. After the Dutch broke two different treaties, they finally gave up and in 1949 Indonesians were able to form their own constitution and govern themselves. Their goal was to set up a political system that included all the characteristics of a democracy: elected officials, a balance of powers, free speech, free trade, the rule of law, equal representation under the law, and all the basic freedoms from government interference. Indonesians also applied the meaning of democratic equality and equal rights to the development of a public school system and public health care, through a system of taxation that redistributed some wealth. Indonesians also had to develop government agencies to collect taxes and provide education, health care, transportation, and other services the citizens decided that a tax-paying Indonesian citizen deserves to receive from the government. Indonesians wanted a society that functioned internally much like the societies of the colonial powers claimed to function internally. They did not want to use the same ideology or worldview that the colonial powers used to oppress them. They wanted to articulate a new way of understanding all aspects of human culture, a way that fit with their own history and culture and that would be most likely to lead to a society of thriving, middle-class citizens.

Indonesians did not want to define political life the way John Locke and the US

Declaration of Independence did. They did not want to hold their politicians accountable as just or unjust only on the basis of whether they were allowing citizens to become as prosperous as each individual decided was rational and best. They did not want to trivialize the impact of religious belief on the ability of citizens to live together well as citizens under a common body of laws. However, they also knew well the power of religious bigotry. They knew the way the Dutch used religious beliefs to justify their superiority, to justify fear of the ‘other,’ and to justify oppression and violence which otherwise would clearly go against the commandments of any religious tradition.

Instead of imitating the West, Indonesians did what Whitehead, Jung, and

Lazlo recommend: they redefined the relationship between religion and politics. The five principles of Pancasila, the founding document of the nation of Indonesia, are as follows: 1) Belief in One Supreme God (this includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Confucianism); 2) A just and civilized humanity; 3) Indonesian

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[internal] unity; 4) A people’s democracy led by wisdom through deliberation and representation; and 5) Justice for all Indonesian people.

In writing Pancasila, Indonesians knew they were developing a new paradigm

for understanding all aspects of culture and a new model for a democratic society. They were rejecting the Enlightenment worldview and the ideology of individual and collective rights. In complete opposition to Enlightenment political ideology, Indonesians chose to begin with religious belief. As Whitehead, Jung, and Lazlo all recommend, they focused on the most universal, humanistic, and ecumenical aspects of the six dominant religious traditions practiced by their citizens. They wrote a founding document that assumes any citizen who adhered to the real spirit of religion in any tradition will live together peacefully with people from a different tradition. They even included Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the religion of their oppressors, because many Indonesians are Christians. They wanted to make clear to their citizens and everyone else that they could distinguish between the real message of Christianity and the perverse way it was abused by the Dutch and all the colonial powers to maintain and even increase their power. They distinguished between the essence of religion and its great value in developing human culture and the great harm done when religious traditions are perverted.

As Whitehead, Jung, and Lazlo point out, religion is a highly complex product

of human culture. It arises from the human need for meaning and purpose over and above the need to survive. This need is so great that people sacrifice survival needs and their lives in order to gain meaning. As Jung points out, because religion focuses on views of the ultimate meaning in life that cannot be proven through scientific method, religion can be used as a way to demonize others and idealize oneself. It is easy to project the dark shadow onto others in the name of ‘God’s will’ because no one has any concrete proof of what an immaterial God wants from us. Instead of avoiding the issue altogether, as Westerners did, the Indonesian constitution addresses it as the first priority. Citizens of Indonesia are asked to live out their religious beliefs in ways that promote a free and open society. Pancasila demands that Indonesians will treat each other as equals, not apart from or in spite of their religious beliefs, but because of those beliefs. According to Pancasila, no one is truly ‘religious’ unless they live justly in relation to fellow citizens. No legitimate religious believer will try to take advantage of a fellow citizen on the basis of religious conviction.

The Indonesian model of religious belief should be called ‘spiritual humanism’

because it assumes that human beings naturally recognize powers greater than themselves. Further, human beings cannot be fully human unless they are motivated by some idea of goodness and justice that goes beyond meeting basic survival needs. Whitehead’s, Jung’s, and Lazlo’s positions are also types of spiritual humanism.

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Indonesia is on the forefront, then, for developing a new model for human culture in the age of systems sciences and the next wave of globalization. Indonesians have chosen to show to the world that religious belief leads inevitably to justice. Beginning with Principle #1: Belief in One Supreme God. Pancasila is based on the view that the other four principles follow inevitably from such a belief.

Principle #2: A just and civilized humanity links the tradition of humanism

to belief in God. There is no opposition between the religious understanding of human nature and the human condition and the affirmation of our humanity. This, also, reflects a complete rejection of the ideology and history of Western culture. The Indonesians knew that the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, accepted by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, has often been used to justify authoritarian governments. People are assumed to be sinners by nature. They therefore must have authoritarian leaders and institutions, especially political ones, to keep them from destroying themselves and each other. They have to be taken care of by someone else, someone with power. The history of Western culture is a history of people killing each other in the name of what they called ‘God,’ the ‘God’ of Christianity and Judaism. Indonesians reject such behavior as religious in any sense. They want to set up a paradigm in which religious belief is the very foundation for democratic society and a civilized humanity.

By contrast, most of the United States Declaration of Independence is a

pseudo-scientific proof. The Declaration uses facts to support its conclusion that the King of England is a tyrant and deserves to be overthrown. It uses material well-being or lack thereof as the fundamental criteria for determining whether a political leader is just or unjust. Material well-being includes security of person and possessions and individuals freedom of choice to speak and behave as one likes without government interference. The Declaration uses science to justify political revolution. It is a very individualistic, secular and materialistic document. The Founding Fathers of Indonesia clearly had no interest in imitating this.

Principle #3: Indonesian unity implies necessarily that Indonesians will

protect each other and create one unified state, even when they belong to all of the world’s great religions. Muslims will live together with Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Jews, and Christians. This is not a document based on religious toleration, the willingness to ‘put up with’ people you know are wrong just for the sake of maintaining social order. Rather, this document shows that unity between members of these religions is a religious mandate. One cannot be an honest member of any of these religions without desiring the well-being of members of all the others.

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Principle #4: A people’s democracy led by wisdom through deliberation and representation. This principle points out that no one religion makes its believers superior to others. No one religion can be used to justify a disproportionate number of members of one religion gaining political and social advantage over others. People vote for who they think will rule best. They should not base their vote on the candidate’s religion. If the country is 88% Muslim, chances are that the vast majority of elected officials will be Muslim. But there is no natural or necessary connection between being Muslim and being better at ruling. The people are being educated to talk to each other about a candidate’s experience and record as evidence of his or her ability to rule well. Unfortunately, as happens everywhere, too often the determining factors include friends with the money to pay for campaigns and other ways political life is corrupted. The point, though, is that the constitution trains people to focus on what matters. The corruption cannot enter because the constitution itself promoted favoritism, even when religion has so often been used to proclaim one’s moral and political superiority and, hence, one’s competence as a ruler.

Principle #5: Justice for all Indonesian People. This principle points out

that religious life cannot be separated from social and political activism. Claiming to believe in God necessarily means treating other people justly. One cannot claim to love another person without also voting for leaders who structure and run their institutions so that collective goods and services, including money, education, and health care, are distributed to all and according to what each needs. Unity, Principle #3, represent a basic trust and good will between all citizens. Justice, Principle #5, implies follow through from good will to good institutions and policies. Setting up these institutions, rather than protecting individuals’ rights, is the standard by which politicians will be judged. If they refuse to use their power and influence in ways that promote collective well-being, they are neither pious believers in a just and good God or competent and just rulers of their own people.

In every way, therefore, the ideas set out in the five principles of Pancasila are all

parts of a whole. The whole is a new model for culture, as Lazlo defines culture. Lazlo says that in a time of crisis, cultures need to reexamine the underlying basic values and structures of the universe as a whole and human culture within it and have to reframe their entire culture to respond to the crisis. Lazlo points out that culture is a holistic level of reality that goes way beyond the mere need to survive. Today, the human race could destroy itself and nature as we know it. The model of Pancasila goes a long way to prevent two of the worst threats to global self-destruction: human arrogance toward nature, the worst sin in any religious tradition, and the confrontation between Islam and the two other Religions of the Book, Judaism and Christianity.

Pancasila and Islam

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Another great contribution of Indonesia to international culture is the implicit

union of the Five Pillars of Islam with the Five Principles of the Constitution. It is no accident that there happen to be five main points in the Constitution and five main pillars of Islam.

The first Pillar of Islam is Shahada: Testifying to God's One-ness: The

declaration "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet." The Constitution was clearly designed to imitate, but also clearly differ from, the first pillar of Islam. While the Constitution makes clear that six world religions are considered legitimate in terms of belief in God, the Constitution also makes clear that the spirit of the Indonesians should be very much like the true religious spirit of any human being: belief in an ultimate first principle that gives life sacred and ultimate meaning. Whitehead, Jung, and Lazlo could all agree to this basic principle while not believing that what is being referred to is a personal God, much less the specific God of the Islamic faith. All of them, however, would be happy to live in a culture that follows the principles of Pancasila, as long as the rulers use their power for the well-being of the ruled and have the skills necessary to know best how to achieve this goal.

The second principle of Islam is prayer, Salat. Muslims are required to pray

five times each day. This principle and the behavior connected to it should be applauded by anyone who is concerned with the development of culture today. Prayer is a continual reminder that there is a power beyond human beings. Today, one might think of that power as the force of nature that drives toward higher and higher levels of complexity, as Lazlo does. One might think of the power of the unconscious which acts as a power that gives life meaning and ‘feels’ like a power beyond oneself, as Jung does. The Muslim view of God and the need for prayer is probably most like Whitehead’s view.

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized . . . The immediate reaction of human nature to the religious vision is worship . . . The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love.55 The third principle of Islam is Zakat: Giving charity. No society can survive

unless the citizens are generous. Plato and Aristotle went so far as to describe greed, the desire for more than one’s share, as the worst political evil. This desire leads

55 Whitehead, 192.

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inevitably to a gap between the rich and poor. The rich have no limits to their desires and have the power to structure the society to serve them, even though the institutional structure might be officially ‘democratic.’ The poor have no time to participate in social and political life but must stay focused on what they need to do to survive. They cannot develop their capacity for deliberation.

No structuring and restructuring of institutions or electing and reelecting of

leaders in all sectors of society will lead to justice and good will unless people are generous. All major religions condemn greed. When examining the harmful effects of greed on human society and the promotion of generosity by all major religious traditions, it makes sense to connect religion with politics. The modern paradigm assumed that if everyone stays focused on their own individual prosperity they will create wealth that promotes the well-being of everyone else. Plato, Aristotle, and the great religious leaders knew this was folly. The rich would only find ways to control the social and political system to promote their own interests. The poor would only get poorer. Animosity and distrust between the rich and poor would increase, undermining social stability and preventing a higher level of cultural life.

The fourth principle of Islam is Sawm: Fast. No society can survive unless the

citizens exercise self-control in relation to physical pleasure such as hunger and sex. Hunger, especially, is continually with us and must be kept under control. The habit of fasting reminds citizens that they depend on God/the universe first and then upon the culture as a whole to provide food. Fasting reminds citizens to avoid excess consumption and even the desire for excesses. Self-control in relation to physical pleasures is internalized. The habit of fasting could never be required by political leaders, but it does strengthen the moral character of citizens, which improves their ability to think clearly about how to organize their society and distribute limited resources, especially something as fundamental and immediate as food.

The fifth principle of Islam is Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca. This requirement

links Indonesian Muslims to Muslims around the world. If they go to Mecca, Indonesian Muslims might have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with Muslims who live in Islamic societies governed by rigid Shiar’ia Law. They could then compare their society with more authoritarian Islamic societies from the point of view of people who live there. Most Muslims will never come to Indonesia, so going to Mecca is one way Indonesians can tell them about their great democratic society with 88% Muslim citizens. Muslims from the nations that are now making the change from authoritarian to democratic societies, including Tunisia and Eqypt, could get information and inspiration from Indonesians. The gathering of Muslims from around the world in Mecca should be applauded rather than feared by Westerners. It could lead to an increase in humanistic and ecumenical Islam and a decrease in

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authoritarian and intolerant Islam. Indonesian Muslims have a crucial contribution to make in this process.

VII. Conclusion: Indonesia’s Place on the World’s Stage

Indonesia, like any other nation, cannot ‘save the world’ alone. At the moment,

Indonesian ‘development’ is taking the same self-destructive route as is still the dominant model throughout the world: the exploitation of natural resources for corporate gain and increased national prosperity. Indonesians know the problems with this model, however, because changes in the earth’s climate hit them directly. Very few Indonesians would deny the reality and destruction of climate change. Very few would deny that human behavior is a large factor in the destruction of the earth’s Gaia system and that the situation can change if human behavior changes. Indonesians know they must connect their religious lives to respect for the Gaia system. Hopefully, they will soon be able to control the direction of their development and find a way to prosper economically without the continual exploitation and unsustainable depletion of their natural resources. China, India, and Western nations are the greatest consumers of what Indonesia has to offer. At the moment, Indonesia cannot afford to turn them down. Either the world’s culture will change, or everyone will go under. Indonesia is not wealthy enough to take the lead in saving the planet. Indonesia greatest contribution to the wellspring of ideas is in its founding document, Pancasila, and in its model of Islam.

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